Crosscut
by Sean Prentiss
University of New Mexico Press $18.95
Reviewed by Robert Halleck
Sean Prentiss’s first collection of poetry, Crosscut (University of New Mexico Press), is a fitting follow-up to his 2015 book Finding Abbey, which is the story of his search for the unmarked grave of Edward Abbey, the great American naturalist. In Crosscut, an older and wiser Sean Prentiss takes us on a rugged journey as he leads a group of at-risk teens on a grueling five-month journey building trails in the Pacific Northwest. Throughout the 73 poems in the book, we learn a great deal about Prentiss and his crew of teens fighting their own demons as they work in an unforgiving environment that strips away unnecessary things such as words and daily showers.
In "Trail Crew" we meet the six at risk teens like Strings, a heroin dabbler who plays guitar like a bird sings; Sirius, hooked on pot and housebreaking; and Stacy who lasts only a week. It is a motley crew that Prentiss leads while dealing with his growing maturity and a dying long distance romance.
There is the depiction of two lives in these spare, sharp poems. There is the grinding 9 to 10-hour days using tools such as Pulaskis, hazel hoes, and crosscut saws (don't worry there is a glossary in the back of the book) to be contrasted with the duality of a night in the town for laundry and more than a few beers. The tools and life in the camp crowd out the useless words as we find in "Stripping":
Week by week we grow toward a condensed language.
Words disremembered, abandoned from tents and saw
packs. What use for the word ‘sink’. When might we utter
‘closet’ or ‘phone’, or ‘bank account’? These words
unneeded as a third thumb, unneeded as money or credit cards. (38)
Talk means so little, as we learn in "Rain Gear.” Prentiss writes:
It hasn't stopped raining in thirty six days,
Cascading water till Utnapisyhtims Ark
would feel at home. (40)
The members of the crew grow and mature in these five months worth of lovingly created poems. There is no human resource department. Reviews and appraisals are as simple as the one described in "The Trails of Our Lives":
During her mid-season
review, I tell Red, ‘I don't
offer praise unless
I mean it.’ She laughs, ‘I know.’
I should look at her
when I speak, I gaze instead,
toward where I imagine
she might fly. (54)
Crosscut is so much about how life can be molded in a few short months of long days. Prentiss's poems remind you of the work of Gary Snyder and the harsh lives of the characters in Jack Driscoll's short stories. Many of the poems in Crosscut have appeared in magazines and journals. I expect after reading Crosscut you will be watching for other Sean Prentiss poems in your daily reading. His language is crisp, spare, descriptive. Life pared down to its essentials.
Robert Halleck has been writing poetry for over 50 years and is the author of four poetry chapbooks. He is a regular attendee at Kenyon's Summer Workshops where he studies with Natalie Shapero. His work has appeared in several journals, including The Paterson Literary Review and Rye Whisky Review. Robert is a member of San Diego's Not Dead Yet Poets and hopes to remain so for a number of years.